HE was one notable friend who had made me feel special – special in the sense that not a lot of people in this whole wide world have a rocket scientist for a friend. Yes, he is a rocket scientist, the kind that we all want to make jokes about in order to justify our less-than-genius IQ.He – let’s call him Bud – doesn’t look like a stereotyped egghead, say, like Einstein. He’s even nowhere near, in looks and eccentricity, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) of the Back to the Future films. Bud looks like a regular guy, maybe more attractive than others because he is, after all, a rocket scientist; no airs, no looking down his nose attitude. He cracks jokes: some are outrageously funny, a few ridiculously corny. He could be sarcastic without the other person knowing he was being such; he could also give a wee lecture on propulsion using layman’s language (but still, my less-than-genius IQ could not grasp its principle).
We have lost contact for years, and then one day, early this year, I dropped him a line and asked how he was doing. This – sending him an email – was not done on impulse. Twice, I woke up knowing that Bud was in my dream; only, I had no idea what the dream was about. I just knew he was in the dream. It took me over a week before I managed to write him a short note. Turned out, he wasn’t doing well; in fact, he was very ill: he had cancer. He was fighting for his life, and he was scheduled for a major, major surgery after a few other previous recent surgeries. It was unnerving.
Bud was on the operating table for nearly 30 hours with a team of specialists; I wasn’t there but I could imagine it was touch-and-go. The surgery was successful, his life is saved. Of course, he knew before the procedure that his life will be changed forever after surgery. Among those changes – he could no longer speak. And to think I was the last person – besides his family – who he spoke to, on the phone, a few hours before the surgery. He also could no longer eat solid food or drink any liquid for the rest of his life. Tough, tough, tough.
However, I did not immediately learn if the surgery went well. It took a few days before I heard a couple of times from his colleague at work that yes, he was conscious a day after surgery. Conscious – but will he live? I did not have the courage to ask. When I did not hear from my rocket scientist friend again after two months, I looked, online, for the obituary pages of his local paper. It was unsettling, to be sure, but I had to know.
When I heard from him again through email, he was cheerful and upbeat. I could imagine he was like that with his son and siblings – smiling and assuring them that all is well, that he will write that book on surviving cancer, that he will, perhaps next year, climb Mt. Shasta, and enjoy nature like he has enjoyed it before; and that he will get back to his much-delayed project, putting up a taller wall in his property to guard against forest fire. His passion for life and living is amazing that I feel guilty sometimes when I’m feeling down.
But for all of Bud’s bravado, and while I admire his resilience, I realized just how ironic life could be at times. His very words echo this irony:
… the radiation took its toll… I hope to God we never have a nuclear war with anyone even though I spent a lifetime developing rockets to deliver such a terrible weapon…
